Indian Strategic Studies: 02/03/14

3 February 2014

"The U.S. Created the Taliban" And Other Myths & Legends From the Pakistani Generals

February 1, 2014

Ten Fictions that Pakistani Defense Officials Love to Peddle

C. Christine Fair

War on the Rocks

January 31, 2014

The U.S.-Pakistan “strategic dialogue” has restarted yet again. I would be remiss if I did not point that it has never been strategic and it has certainly not been a dialogue. No doubt the Pakistanis are worried that wary American taxpayers and their congressional representatives may close the checkbook for good when the last U.S. soldier departs from Afghanistan. In the spirit of perpetual rent-seeking, Pakistani defense officials have recently alighted upon Washington to offer the same tired and hackneyed narratives that are tailored to guilt the Americans into keeping the gravy train chugging along.

Here are the top ten ossified fictions that Pakistani defense officials are pedaling and what you need to know to call the “Bakvas Flag” on each of them.

1. “Our relationship should be strategic rather than transactional.”

Nonsense and here’s why. For the U.S.-Pakistan relationship to be “strategic,” there should be a modicum of convergence of interests in the region if not beyond. Yet, there is no evidence that this is the case. In fact, Pakistan seems most vested in undermining U.S. interests in the region. In the name of the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the United States has given Pakistan some $27 billion in military and financial aid as well as lucrative reimbursements. However, during these same years, Pakistan has continued to aid and abet the Afghan Taliban and allied militant groups such as the Haqqani Network. These organizations are the very organizations that havekilled American military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan along with those of our allies in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and countless more Afghans, in and out of uniform. This is in addition to the flotilla of Islamist militant groups that Pakistan uses as tools of foreign policy in India. Foremost among them is the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is proscribed by the United States and which is responsible for the most lethal terror operations in India and, since 2006, has openly operated against Americans in Afghanistan.

2. “The United States has been an unreliable ally.”

Rubbish. Pakistani officials enjoy invoking the two treaties, the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the Southeast Treaty Organization (SEATO) through which the United States and Pakistan ostensibly were allies. They lament that despite these partnerships and commitments, the United States did not help Pakistan in its wars with India (1965 and 1971) and even aided non-aligned India in its 1962 war with Communist China. It should be noted that Americans were never party to CENTO; rather, they maintained an observer status, and Americans were leery of letting the Pakistanis join SEATO, fearing that it was a ruse to suck the alliance into the intractable Indo-Pakistan dispute. In point of fact, Pakistani officials beginning with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, and General Ayub Khan repeatedly sought to join American military alliances in exchange for money and war materiel.

While Pakistan professed a commitment to America’s anti-Communist agenda, it sought these partnerships to build its military capabilities to continue challenging India. Until the 1950s, the United States had no such interest in Pakistan.

When the United States finally embraced such partnerships, the treaties were specifically designed to combat Communist aggression ensuring that the United States had no obligation to support Pakistan in its wars with India. The United States certainly had no obligation to support Pakistan in the 1965 war with India, which it started. Pakistan’s grouses about the American position during the 1971 war is particularly disingenuous. As Gary Bass has detailed, President Nixon violated numerous American laws to continue providing military support to the abusive West Pakistani regime as it prosecuted a genocidal campaign against the Bengalis in East Pakistan.

3. “The United States used Pakistan for its anti-Soviet jihad.”

More fiction. Pakistan and Afghanistan came into conflict immediately after Pakistan’s independence because Afghanistan rejected Pakistan’s membership in the United Nations and laid claim to large swaths of Pakistani territory in Balochistan, the tribal areas, and in the then-Northwest Frontier Province. As such, Pakistan began instrumentalizing Islamists in Afghanistan as early as the 1950s. Following the ouster of King Zahir Shah by Mohammed Daoud Khan in 1973, Daoud began prosecuting Afghanistan’s Islamists who opposed his modernizing policies. Shia Islamists fled to Iran and Sunni Islamists generally fled to Pakistan. In 1974, then-civilian Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto established a cell within Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISI) to mobilize these exiled dissidents for anti-regime operations in Afghanistan. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq continued the nascent “Afghan jihad” after seizing power from Bhutto in 1977.

ENABLE THE WARRIOR-DIPLOMAT

Karl Kadon

January 30, 2014

The mission in Afghanistan is either going to change into something much smaller—about 10,000 troops—or it will end. After two long foreign occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the appetite of the American public for lengthy stabilization operations is gone. Cries for “returning to our roots” and “getting back to the basics” will echo through the corridors of the Pentagon. Top line fiscal cuts will cause the bottom lines of “nonessential” training and education programs to dwindle. We’ll lean out our personnel numbers, stick to the basics of offensive and defensive land, amphibious, maritime and airborne operations, and forget the “softer side” of basic combat operations. Never mind training for what happens after initial combat ends—nongovernmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and other governmental organizations will take care of that, right?

Such outspoken advocates of “returning to the basics” should keep in mind the timeless observation of former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, who was more right than he knew when he said “All politics is local.” This is true in Afghanistan, and will continue to be so wherever Washington tells the military to deploy, even in wars that we may initially view as “conventional,” like Iraq in 2003. And even as Washington spurns any operation with a whiff of counterinsurgency, U.S. forces remain involved in missions that require partnering with and assisting allied militaries and community leaders. Evan Munsing’s recent article does well to highlight the harsh reality that locally brokered solutions in Afghanistan will be the product of a weak central government. However, given the failed imposition of a centralized counterinsurgency approach to a decentralized problem in Afghanistan, this author would argue that the need for well-trained “warrior-diplomats” is key for future deployments in resource-constrained environments. COIN doctrine itself was not the problem. The strategy was the problem. The lack of a clearly defined political endstate gave rise to interagency parochialism and regional interpretations of “progress” and “stability.” Some units improvised local solutions, in anticipation of those inevitable locally brokered post-withdrawal deals of which Munsing speaks. This was certainly the case with the U.S. Marines in Sangin District of Helmand Province in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 when they were given the nebulous mission to “conduct full-spectrum counterinsurgency operations in order to extend the governance and economic development of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.” And as the mission in Afghanistan draws down, it is worth looking back on some lessons learned. For even when dealt a strategy that lacks clearly defined political objectives, units at the operational level can adapt and counter instability using a locally ascertained solution.

The centralized government solution that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was tasked to realize was ignorant of cold hard facts on Afghan society, economy, and history; namely, the feudal traits of Afghan society, a piddling economy, and a history of being the proverbial doormat of invading forces heading into and out of Southwest Asia. Consequently, the operational objectives that the Marines in Sangin and all other allied forces in Afghanistan were ordered to pursue conflicted egregiously with the political realities of individual districts to the point of being tactically ineffective. So, like good Marines, they adapted to the local version of stability in the final months of 2010. Was the result the “picture of success” envisioned in ISAF headquarters and Washington? Only time and commitment would tell.

Military Plans Reflect Afghanistan Uncertainty

By THOM SHANKER

JAN. 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — American and NATO military planners, facing continued political uncertainty about whether foreign troops will remain in Afghanistan after December, have drawn up plans to deploy a force this summer that is tailored to assume a training mission in 2015 but is also small enough to withdraw if no deal for an enduring presence is reached, alliance officials said.

With President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan refusing to sign security agreements approving a presence for American and NATO troops after 2014, allied military planners have been forced to prepare for both sudden success and abject failure of proposals for a continuing mission to train, advise and assist Afghan forces after combat operations officially end this year.

The decision on whether to extend the foreign military presence is a political one, and it will be decided first by Mr. Karzai and then by President Obama and the elected leaders from NATO nations. The process has brought vitriol in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and deep concern in Washington and allied capitals.

Launch media viewer Soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, last week. Allied officials have drawn up plans for a force small enough for a quick exit. I. Sameem/European Pressphoto Agency

The delays have complicated military planning, since the governments of nations that contribute troops must approve any sustained deployments — and the required financing — months in advance, with a number of notional deadlines for finishing an agreement already long passed.

The Epidemic the White House Does Not Want to Talk About: Endemic Corruption in the Afghan Government

January 31, 2014

Afghanistan: Why The Karzais Support The Taliban

strategypage.com

January 31, 2014

January 31, 2014: In places like Afghanistan, which was one of the major recipients of foreign aid in the last decade, donors have gone to extraordinary lengths to get the aid to the people, and not into the secret foreign bank accounts of their leaders. The local officials consider the anti-corruption measures of the donor nations a challenge and often manage to get around these pesky rules. In short, if you want to know where the next war will break out just follow the money, especially the cash that is not going where it is supposed to.

Afghans will steal money even when it is not in their interest to do so. Consider something as basic as road maintenance. U.S. aid enabled Afghanistan to build $4 billion worth of roads since 2001 and that was a major boost to the economy. As hard as it was to monitor the spending for road building, it was even more difficult to do so for road maintenance. So in 2012 the U.S. halted aid for road maintenance and told the Afghans to scrounge up the money and resources to do it themselves if they really wanted the roads to remain passable. As a result only some of the roads are maintained, in areas where the locals organize road repairs out of self-interest. But this still leaves many parts of the country cut off because you need continuous roads for some economic opportunities (exporting local produce.) The lack of road maintenance is discouraging foreign investment in mining, for example, because without roads there is no way to get construction equipment and materials in and no way to get the extracted minerals out.

A recently released report (which the U.S. government wanted to keep secret) showed how auditors found no part of the Afghan government able to handle foreign aid without most of the money being stolen. Corruption and poor government continue to be a major problem which the drug trade is simply part of.The only battle that counts in Afghanistan is the struggle against corruption, but controlling the drug trade is part of that fight. It is the general dishonesty, larceny and use of violent threats instead of consensus and persuasion that make Afghanistan such a hellish place and allow the drug gangs to thrive. The Islamic conservatives promise that submission to Islam in all things (as during the religious dictatorship of the Taliban in the late 1990s) will solve all these problems. The Taliban approach did not work and too many Afghans know it (many from personal experience). The failure of the Taliban to run the country effectively put the spotlight on another problem; a lack of enough people trained to actually operate a large government (or any other kind of organization). Efficiently running a large organization takes a lot of people with specific skills. Low education levels, and a general lack of large organizations, means Afghanistan simply doesn’t have enough people to effectively operate a national government and all the large bureaucracies that includes. This is a problem that is not quickly overcome since you cannot govern Afghanistan with a lot of foreign bureaucrats (even if you just call them “advisors”). Afghans are very touchy about that sort of thing. Afghans may be poor and ill-educated, but they are also proud, heavily armed and short-tempered. So all that foreign aid is easier to steal (for your family and tribe) than to spend efficiently for the common good.

China in the Indian Ocean: Deep Sea Forays

3 February 2014

MARITIME MATTERS

Vijay Sakhuja

Director (Research), Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), New Delhi

http://www.ipcs.org/article/china/china-in-the-indian-ocean-deep-sea-forays-4280.html

China’s maritime ambitions are expanding and it is making forays into the deep seas beyond its waters. The State Oceanic Administration (SOA) has drawn plans to build scientific research vessels and mother ships for submersibles. Further, the scientific agenda for 2014 includes the 30th scientific expedition to Antarctica and 6th expedition to the Arctic. China will also dispatch its research vessels to the northwest Pacific to monitor radioactivity in international waters and its foray into the Indian Ocean would involve seabed resource assessment including the deployment of the 22-ton Jiaolong, China's first indigenously built manned deep-sea submersible.

China’s scientific urge had driven its attention to seabed exploration. In the 1970s, it actively participated in the UN led discussions on seabed resource exploitation regime. At that time it did not possess technological capability to exploit seabed resources. In the 1980s, it dispatched ships to undertake hydrographic surveys of the seabed. On 5 March 1991, China registered with the UN as a Pioneer Investor of deep seabed exploitation and was awarded 300,000 square kilometers in the Clarion–Clipperton area in the Pacific Ocean. Soon thereafter, China Ocean Mineral Resources R & D Association (COMRA), the nodal agency for seabed exploration and exploitation of resources was established. In 2001, China obtained mining rights for poly-metallic nodule and in 2002, poly-metallic sulfide deposits in the Southwestern Indian Ocean. In 2011, COMRA signed a 15-year exploration contract with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) that entrusted it with rights to develop ore deposit in future.

Although the Jiaolong has been built indigenously, it is useful to mention that the hull, advanced lights, cameras and manipulator arms of Jiaolong were imported and acquanauts had received training overseas. In August 2010, Jiaolong successfully positioned the Chinese flag at 3,700 meters under the sea in South China Sea and displayed China’s technological prowess in deep sea operations. China also possesses an unmanned deep-sea submarine Qianlong 1 (without cable) which can dive to 6,000 meters and an unmanned submersible Hailong (with cable) that can take samples from the seabed. As early as 2005, six Chinese acquanauts (five pilots and one scientist) had undergone deep sea dive training in the US. Currently, China has eight deep-sea submersible operators including six trainees (four men and two women) being trained at State Deep Sea Base in Qingdao on a 2-year course.

CHINA’S STADIUM DIPLOMACY IN AFRICA

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BY ELLIOT ROSS

In Maputo, the “Garden for Sculptors” behind the Museu Nacional de Arte on Avenida Ho Chi Minh has become a kind of prison yard for Mozambique’s various Ozymandiases, a semi-public dumping ground where colonial monuments now crumble quietly away. A marble European baroness reclines in thick robes, the grasses growing up around her base. Both of her arms have been lopped off, but her amputated left hand still touches the midriff of a black male slave crouched in a loincloth by her side. Nearby, a decapitated Lady Justice presides over a small patch of weeds and bare earth. No longer public art, but not quite garbage, these are the monuments which were extracted like rotten teeth from the city’s squares and public buildings when Portuguese colonial rule finally ended, but which nobody could quite bring themselves to destroy.

One August afternoon I chanced upon the newest addition to this miserable collection. Facedown in the dirt lies an enormous bronze angel, wings stretched high over its head like some kind of massive avian Academy Award. Walking around it to its jagged base, ripped from wherever it had once been rooted, I found that the figure was completely hollow. Inside there was a small plaque whose Chinese characters I could not read. Intrigued, I went back into the museum, and asked the receptionist there where this gigantic statue had come from and why it had been dumped here. He answered with the air of someone patiently explaining something very obvious to someone very dull. The angel had been erected in 2011 by the Chinese government in front of the new national soccer stadium, to give the place some character and serve as a kind of focal point. But when Mozambican officials saw that the statue had “a Chinese face”, they decided it wouldn’t do to have a Chinese angel in front of their national stadium, tore it down, and trucked it into town to join the rest of Maputo’s unwanted colonial trappings in the Garden for Sculptors.

Mozambique’s new national stadium, Estádio Nacional do Zimpeto, is on the outskirts of Maputo, not far from the Chinese-built international airport. The Chinese have also overseen the construction of the new parliament building and a new “Palace of Justice” in the last few years. The main institutions through which a sense of Mozambican national life is constructed—the laws of the nation, international departures and arrivals, and its most spectacular public moments of heroism—now take place in Chinese-built structures.

Syria: Iran Is The Key To Victory

Latest Developments on the Battlefield in the Syrian Civil War

January 28, 2014

Strategypage.com

ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, also called ISIS) is taking a beating in Syria and Iraq. For all of January the Iraqi branch has been trying to seize cities in Western Iraq (Anbar province) while the Syrian ISIL has been fighting the Syrian rebels (moderates and Islamic terrorists) who finally united against the ISIL and sought to destroy this Iraqi led organization, at least in Syria. So far this fighting has killed over a 1,500 people and put Iraqi Islamic terrorists on the defensive on both sides of the border. About half of the dead are ISIL and another 10-15 percent are civilians. The Syrian Army took advantage of the rebel civil war for a while and made some advances. But those advances soon stalled and the rebels pushed back. ISIL only has a few thousand fighters left in the north, around Aleppo and along the Turkish border and in the east (across the border from Anbar). Within the rebel movement ISIL is now outnumbered more than 20 to 1, although in the areas where it is strongest the odds are much lower (often four or five to one) and their fanatic fighting spirit is no longer sufficient to make up for their low numbers. ISIL has suffered heavily in the last four weeks, probably as much from desertions as from combat losses. Many ISIL fighters are dismayed at having to fight fellow rebels and have gone over to more moderate rebel groups or left Syria in disgust. At the end of January the al Qaeda branch in Iraq is on the defensive while the one in Syria is fighting for survival. The defeat of ISIL does not mean the end of al Qaeda in Syria because even more al Qaeda men are fighting against ISIL. The losers here are the Iraqi radicals who dominate the ISIL. Despite the attention paid to the war with ISIL the rebels still control most of the country, or at least dispute control with the security forces. One thing that’s hurting ISIL in Syria and the West is their savagery. In addition to slaughtering Moslems who don’t agree with them, they have also been particularly brutal against Syrian Christians.

In 2013 57 percent of the Christians killed for religious reasons worldwide died in Syria, mostly because of ISIL. Some 90 percent of the worldwide deaths were at the hands of Islamic terrorists and ISIL was the worst offender. In the last six months the Syrian rebels have gone through some serious changes. In late 2013 there was a major reorganization within the SMC (Supreme Military Command, formerly FSA/Free Syrian Army). This was the original coalition and was largely moderate, democratic and not very effective in combat. Many of the rebel fighters noted that the Islamic terrorists groups were more successful in combat and many rebels became radicalized and joined the Islamic groups. Not all these Islamic groups were terrorist in outlook. Many of the groups within the SMC became more Islamic and last November most rebels abandoned the SMC and formed a loose coalition of Islamic (including Islamic terrorist) combat organizations. It is believed that 20-30 percent of the rebels consider themselves al Qaeda. This left the SMC with the allegiance of only about 30,000 armed rebels. The FSA had earlier evolved into the SMC in an attempt to become more relevant. Based outside Syria the SMC does not control any fighting forces in the traditional sense. It is more a conduit for a lot of foreign aid, including some weapons. Efforts by the FSA and SMC to get all, or even most of the rebels to coordinate their efforts failed. Many active rebel groups inside Syria pledge allegiance to SMC just for the supplies. A lot of rebel groups will actually listen to the SMC military experts (who are generally professionals who know what they are talking about) but will not dependably follow-through. Most of the remaining SMC fighters are opposed to Islamic terrorists, especially the ISIL.

Does Israeli Intelligence Have What It Takes for a Successful Airstrike Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities?

January 30, 2014

Bombing Iran: Tough Tasks for Israeli Intelligence

Thomas Saether

The National Interest

January 30, 2014

Historically, Israel’s intelligence services have played a vital role—both direct and indirect—in making decisions of war and peace. In 1954, Israeli intelligence persuaded then Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon to approve of an attempt to sabotage the Anglo-Egyptian agreement concerning British withdrawal from the Suez Canal. And there would have been no air strikes on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in 2007 if not for the information collected by Israel’s intelligence services. Not only are the three current intelligence chiefs (Aviv Kochavi of military intelligence [Aman], Tamir Pardo of Mossad, and Yoram Cohen of Shin Bet) among the key individuals tasked with collecting and presenting information related to an Israeli military operation against Iran’s nuclear program, they are also part of the inner circle of advisors to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Moreover, they would be responsible for assessing the civil and political consequences of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Although there are several forms of military operations that could be undertaken, with Israel’s capabilities and preparations in mind most analysts focus primarily on air strikes directed against Iran’s key nuclear sites. There are five main operational tasks related to destroying an underground facility: detecting the facility; characterizing the site’s features; planning the attack; neutralizing the site; and assessing the success of the operation.

A critical question for Israeli decision-makers and the intelligence apparatus is whether they have sufficient qualitative and accurate intelligence on the Iranian nuclear sites. There is no simple solution to locating and characterizing an underground facility. Possible options include imagery intelligence (photographs from satellites), signature intelligence (detecting heat, sound, or vibration), signals intelligence (radio and radar signals), and the use of human intelligence (agents or informants). Usually, one source is not enough to characterize a facility and determine whether it is for leadership protection, weapons production, weapons storage, or something else. In order to integrate all the methods in an efficient and cost-effective endeavor, one must first obtain the approximate location of a site. This is usually done with either human intelligence or satellites imagery. Israel has some tools to detect underground and excavated facilities. The Ofeq series of reconnaissance satellites provides some photographic coverage of Iran. Furthermore, the Eros-B satellite provides it with a camera that improves the assessment capabilities regarding sites of interest. The satellites’ images can help answer questions regarding whether construction is taking place under the surface, what kind of materials are used in the construction process, and how deep the Iranians are digging. However, given the large size of Iran, and Israel’s somewhat limited satellite assets, searching for clandestine facilities is a challenging task. Moreover, the hide-and-seek game played between Iran and Israeli intelligence allows for the use of deception, which further complicates the search. In order to reduce the risk of deception, intelligence needs to draw its information from multiple sources. Human intelligence would provide added value in this regard and may be the most effective mean to detect clandestine facilities.

Needed: A new NATO for the 21st century

By HARLAN ULLMAN, UPI Outside View Commentator

Jan. 29, 2014

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the annual Munich Security Conference. First focused on Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Cold War, several years ago the conference broadened its agenda to cover global security.

That said, the future of NATO must remain among the West's highest security priorities. For a number of reasons, that isn't happening.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago removed the threat for which NATO was uniquely created. The alliance manfully began the transformation to a post-Cold War world. Since major threats now lay beyond NATO's borders, the alliance expanded its reach. "Out of area or out of business" became the new mantra.

Sept. 11, 2001, tested the alliance. The day following the attacks, NATO invoked the centerpiece of its security guarantee -- Article V -- for the first time in its 52-year history to support the United States. Article V specifies that an attack against one is an attack against all. NATO would shortly join the United States in the Afghan mission.

Against the background of the 2008 financial crisis and struggling economies that mandated defense cuts, the 2010 biannual NATO heads of government and state summit in Lisbon agreed on a new strategic concept. Three core tasks were approved: collective defense; crisis management; and cooperative security. Since then NATO expanded its partnerships with non-alliance members and intervened in Libya precipitating the end of the Gadhafi regime.

The Obama administration would shortly announce a "strategic pivot" to Asia. That pivot distressed, frightened and perplexed NATO allies, worried Asian allies and angered China. Along with the pivot, the United States reduced its ground forces in Europe, augmenting its naval forces and arguing that this rebalancing wouldn't alter the U.S. commitment to the continent.

The Afghan mission is about to end. Before it does, the next biannual summit convenes in Wales this September to discuss NATO's future post-Afghanistan.

As important, but less likely, the summit should address rejuvenating the alliance at a time of both diminished public support and defense spending. That rejuvenation requires re-examining and asking what the three core tasks in the strategic concept now mean and restating the case for the alliance in plain terms readily understood by publics and politicians alike.

Four years after Lisbon, the questions are "collective defense" against whom or what; "crisis management" under what circumstances; and "cooperative security" with whom and for what purposes?

Obviously, the newer and eastern-most member states remain concerned about Russia and its intentions. Russia's decision to increase its defenses is unsettling. Moscow's creation of an economic partnership to counter the European Union; its use of its energy resources as a lever with the West; and its influence in Ukraine don't ease these concerns.

The immediate dangers come from the south -- the Maghreb and the Middle East. Syria is the largest crisis where possibly thousands of jihadis are flocking for training. Egypt and Libya are wracked with violence and uncertainty. And possible spillover to the very substantial Muslim populations in Europe is serious.

Similarly, the alliance must redefine what it means by crisis management. It has given lip service to cyber, infrastructure protection and energy security. It must be more specific. Likewise, NATO must determine how to manage cooperative security given that it has set in place global partnerships.

Given economic realities, NATO cannot count on increased defense spending over the short- to mid-term. But it already spends quite a lot and U.S. demands for greater expenditures won't work. NATO shouldn't worry too much about its total military capability and concentrate on ensuring interoperability so that when called upon the forces will successfully execute missions.

Greater staff exchanges and command post exercises can offset the decrease in large scale military maneuvers if done appropriately. Strengthening education and training using advanced simulators and war games to compensate for reductions in operations can also reduce the impact on readiness.

Last, NATO doesn't do a good job in making the case for its importance. More than 60 years ago, NATO's first secretary-general, British Gen. Lord Ismay, quipped that the alliance's purpose was to keep the United States. in, Germany down and the Russians out. Ismay's quip was more than jest. Today, it can be expanded to advance the reasons why NATO is the centerpiece of western and global security.

NATO's purposes in the 21st century are to keep Europe safe, danger out, Russia with and the United States in. But then the alliance must broadcast this message widely and persistently to skeptical publics and politicians of its 28 members. Unfortunately, the alliance seems to prefer the status quo.

If that attitude continues, the summit will be a lost opportunity. And NATO cannot tolerate many more losses.

(Harlan Ullman is chairman of the Killowen Group, which advises leaders of government and business, and senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

Israel combats cyberattacks, 'biggest revolution in warfare'

Jan. 31, 2014

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TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- The chief of Israel's Military Intelligence has warned the Jewish state is under sustained cyberattack amid "the biggest revolution in warfare, more than gunpowder and the utilization of air power in the past century."

The government is scrambling to set up an emergency task force to counter the growing threat described by Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi Wednesday. The set-up will be based to some extent on the U.S. Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Kovachi told the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv that Israeli financial organizations, businesses and industries have been battered by hundreds of cyberattacks during the last year, dozens of them targeting defense institutions.

"This is a new dimension that we're far from investigating and understanding," he declared.

"Cyber in my modest opinion will soon be revealed to be the biggest revolution in warfare, more than gunpowder and the utilization of air power in the last century."

Israel has been a major leader in cyber warfare for some time. It is widely believed to have sabotaged the core of Iran's contentious nuclear program, its uranium enrichment center, with the notorious Stuxnet virus in 2010 in collaboration with the United States.

Iran is reported to have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into fast-tracking its own cyberwarfare capability, for offense and well as defense, and it's widely believed to have been behind attacks on Saudi Arabian and Qatari energy facilities.

The chief of staff of Israel's military forces, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, warned delegates at the Tel Aviv conference the Jewish state needs to increase its vigilance as the cyberwar threat grows.

Cybersecurity is "a playing field that we need to use to the full, and I think that the State of Israel can and should do much more than it has been doing until now," he said.

Israel "must be at the level of a superpower, and it can be at the level of a superpower," Gantz said.

It is "vital in the extreme" that the country devote all national resources to developing cybersecurity, he stressed. "We cannot wait."

Gantz warned in October that Israel's next war could start with a cyberattack on civilian infrastructure that would paralyze the country.

That followed media reports of an attempted attack on 140 senior figures in Israel's security and defense industries. It involved emails containing malware programmed to steal and copy data that were reported to have been traced back to Chinese defense companies.

A month earlier, what was characterized at the time as a computer malfunction -- later reports said it was the result of a cyberattack -- shut down the Carmel Tunnels, a key traffic artery to northern Israel, including the port city of Haifa, which is also the Israeli navy's major base.

Officials said there had been an attempted cyberattack on Haifa's water system in May.

This issue is assuming greater importance for Israel by the day as its military undergoes a revolutionary shift in doctrine and organization under the 2014-19 spending plan that is sharply downsizing combat forces, eliminating armor and air force formations, to develop a more agile capability focused on tactical interconnectivity and interoperability through digital systems.

Defense sources say the so-called Tzayad Digital Army Program -- spearheaded by state-owned Elbit Systems of Haifa, Israel's leading military systems company -- remains the centerpiece "for connecting command-level echelons with armor, infantry, artillery and other ground forces on a single, secure digital command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, or C4I in military parlance.

All front-line and most reserve units down to battalion level should be fully integrated by 2018 into the digital network managed by the Ground Forces Command, the U.S publication Defense News reports.

It said that beyond the army's Tzayad network, the General Staff's C4I branch is responsible for providing the infrastructure that connects all armed forces networks, from the high command to commanders in the field.

Over the next five years, it will link all field command posts and begin deploying capabilities to support mobile CPs and extend down to small combat units.

Brig. Gen. Eyal Zelinger, commander of the military's C4I Corps, says his outfit seeks to more than triple the bandwidth capacity from the 30 megabytes per second now available to maneuvering formations through upgrades to a truck-deployed network currently operating at brigade level.

Afghan National Army; picking up the intelligence signal

January 27, 2014

By U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class E. L. Craig

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan -- The 201st Afghan National Army Corps received its first training and fielding of the 'Wolfhound' signal intelligence gathering system at Forward Operating Base Gamberi, Jan. 18-31, 2014.

The Wolfhound will allow ANA soldier's to hear enemy radio communication and, as an improvement to the current system, it will tell Afghan troops the enemy's location which has been a source of irritation in the past.

The Wolfhound signal intelligence gathering system is new to the entire Afghan Army; the 201st ANA Corps, located in Regional Command East, North of Kabul and the 203rd ANA Corps in RC East, South of Kabul are the only Afghan units currently receiving the equipment and training.

The internet Was Supposed to be Free and Open. Has Edward Snowden Changed That Perception Forever?

January 27, 2014

After Snowden: How vulnerable is the internet?

Adam Blenford and Christine Jeavans

BBC News

January 27, 2014

The technology pioneers who designed the net’s original protocols saw their creation as a way to share information freely across a network of networks.

Yet Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified documents from the US National Security Agency have revealed that American spies - and their British counterparts at GCHQ - now use that very same internet to sweep up vast amounts of data from the digital trail we leave every day.

It isn’t simply that they mine social media updates and the information we already give to companies. The NSA and GCHQ have allegedly tapped into the internet’s structure.

An ever-growing network

Army Radios Get Low Marks From DOTE

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

on January 29, 2014

From handheld radios to high-tech headquarters, the Army’s top priority is what it calls the network. That’s not one project but a whole array of programs, each complex on its own. They all are supposed to interconnect so it’s no surprise that the Pentagon’s top tester has found plenty of problems. What is surprising in today’s report from the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) is that the Army is having the most trouble with the simplest systems, the portable radios.

We’ve written before about the three-sided struggle between the Army, the incumbent contractors, and upstart firms over portable radios. It’s a saga that’s included secretive lobbying campaigns and a personal apology by a top General Dynamics executive. What DOT&E tells us is that the radios themselves still aren’t working as they should.

There are two kinds of radios, each being built by two contractors under what are technically “low-rate initial production” (LRIP) contracts, with “full and open competition” still to come. One is the handheld Rifleman Radio, built by General Dynamics and Thales; the other is the larger Manpack Radio, so called because it fits in a backpack, built by GD and Rockwell Collins.

“The Manpack radio has not yet demonstrated improvements in a realistic operational test environment,” DOT&E says scathingly. After an early 2012 test found the Manpack “not operationally effective” — DOT&E’s lowest grade — a second test that year found it had showed some improvement but that “it continued to exhibit poor reliability.” (Pro tip: If your cell phone dies during an important business call, that’s annoying. If your radio dies during a battle, that’s potentially lethal).

Then there’s the Rifleman Radio, the smallest but most numerous piece of the sprawling Army network. For example, Rifleman is a key component of the high-tech communications kit for foot troops known as Nett Warrior (the extra “t” is deliberate). But in a May 2013 Army test called a “Network Integration Evaluation” (NIE), DOT&E says, the AN/PRC-154A version of the Rifleman Radio “demonstrated numerous suitability issues that contributed to Soldiers concluding that this radio was not yet acceptable for combat in its current Nett Warrior configuration.” Overall, in fact, “the Rifleman Radio suitability shortfalls reduce the suitability of the Nett Warrior,” a system with which DOT&E is otherwise pretty content.

Both the Rifleman and Manpack programs, DOT&E snarls, are “schedule-driven” — that is, the Army pushes ahead with additional purchases on a predetermined schedule without waiting for proper testing or adjusting course based on test results. “Units are receiving Manpack radios that may have performance deficiencies,” the report warns, and the Army “is planning to field the AN/PRC-154A [Rifleman Radio] in early FY14 prior to completing dedicated operational testing.”

The Rifleman, Manpack, and Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio (MNVR) — recently awarded to Harris Corp. but yet to be delivered — are supposed to connect to wider Joint Battle Command – Platform (JBC-P), which will replace the famous Blue Force Tracker, a kind of militarized Garmin that showed military units the GPS-precise location of both their own vehicle and other US forces. JBC-P just got started, so this is DOT&E’s first annual report on it. The verdict? “Operationally effective,” because troops and commanders could indeed communicate through it, but “not operationally suitable due to poor reliability” — i.e. they couldn’t rely on it working consistently — and “not survivable due to Information Assurance vulnerabilities” — i.e. it’s too easy for an enemy to hack into.

These small-unit systems all nest under what’s called WIN-T, for Warfighter Information Network – Tactical, which links forward command posts to battalions, brigades, and ultimately back to the United States. The basic WIN-T “Increment 1″ now in Army units works fine out of fixed bases, like those troops operate from in Afghanistan, but the service is working hard on an “Increment 2″ version that can network on the move for maneuver warfare. Though it singled out some specific pieces of WIN-T for criticism, DOT&E’s last report on WIN-T Increment 2 “assessed most configuration items as operationally effective” and even “operationally suitable” — i.e. it not only performs the mission, it performs it well enough for real-world operations. Coming from the harsh graders at DOT&E, that’s high praise.

NSA and GCHQ Targeting Popular iPhone Gaming Apps to Gather Personal Information

January 27, 2014

NSA and GCHQ target ‘leaky’ phone apps like Angry Birds to scoop user data

James Ball

The Guardian

GCHQ documents use Angry Birds – reportedly downloaded more than 1.7bn times – as a case study for app data collection.

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of “leaky” smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users’ private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users’ most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

Many smartphone owners will be unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realise that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect.

Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times andProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.

Scooping up information the apps are sending about their users allows the agencies to collect large quantities of mobile phone data from their existing mass surveillance tools – such as cable taps, or from international mobile networks – rather than solely from hacking into individual mobile handsets.